Chapter 16: She Had a Ticket to Ride

Over the Pacific Ocean, 35 miles west of Vandenberg Air Force Base.

November 1, 2003

The Avanti was cruising on autopilot at fifteen thousand feet under VFR conditions, its current heading 172, its current speed 275 knots indicated, or about 330 miles per hour groundspeed. It was a beautiful day in southern California, with light winds out of the northwest and only a few wispy clouds floating about at around eight thousand feet. In the distance, slightly to the left of their current course, three of the channel islands could be seen, rising like brownish lumps from the bright blue water. They were San Miguel Island, Santa Rosa Island, and, largest in the archipelago, Santa Cruz Island.

Jake was in the left side pilot’s seat, Helen Brody in the right one. Celia and Caydee were in the seats immediately behind them, Celia having given up her usual shotgun position so an actual pilot could sit there instead. This was the flight that Jake had told Helen he would take her on. And, of course, he was not dumb enough to take an ex-girlfriend up in his plane without a chaperone or two, thus the presence of Celia and Caydee. Their plan was to fly to Montgomery Field in San Diego. Once there, they would have lunch and then visit the San Diego Zoo, a place that neither Celia nor Helen had ever been before. Caydee and Jake had both been there before, back when he was on his solo tour and he and Laura had taken their daughter there, but neither minded seeing it again, it was that spectacular.

They were not going by the quickest route to the southwest corner of the continental United States. This flight was not about being in a hurry. Instead of flying over land, Jake had taken them thirty miles offshore after takeoff and then turned to the south-southeast, a route that would get them to San Diego from the ocean side instead of coming in from the east.

“How close are we to the restricted airspace bubble around Vandenberg?” Helen asked, looking at the cockpit display, which was much more complicated than she was used to.

“We’re three miles west of it and will get no closer,” Jake told her. “The last thing I need is a couple of F-15s intercepting me and ordering me to land because I strayed into restricted US Air Force airspace near a base they launch rockets from.”

“That would be kind of exciting though, wouldn’t it?” Helen asked with a smile.

“A little more excitement than I care for,” Jake replied.

“And there is no bag full of my dirty panties for them to look at,” Celia said. “That would make them cranky.”

“Dirty panties?” Helen asked, having no idea what Celia was talking about.

Celia explained how pretty much every country’s military officials charged with inspecting aircraft seemed to be really interested in bags that contained dirty panties, both hers and Laura’s.

“That is just disgusting,” Helen declared.

“That’s men for you,” Jake said with a shrug.

By this point, the restricted airspace bubble around Vandenberg AFB was behind them. They were still thirty-five miles offshore and there was no other air traffic anywhere near their altitude. They were about as isolated as an aircraft could get in the southern California region. It was time for the master to become the student.

“You ready to take the controls?” Jake asked Helen

Helen actually looked a little nervous. “I guess so,” she said.

“You guess so?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

“There is just a lot more doodads and readouts on this aircraft,” she said. “And everything is computer generated instead of analog.”

“I have analog backup instruments,” Jake said.

“Yes, I noticed,” Helen said, “but they’re not in the same place as a Cessna’s instruments.”

“You can do this,” Jake assured her. “The primary instruments are simple to read, simple to understand. I’ve seen you eyeballing them as we’ve gone. And, at its basic level, this is still just an aircraft like what you fly every day. Yes, it goes faster, climbs and descends faster, but you still just need yoke, rudder pedals, throttle, and trim to do what we’re going to be doing. And you’re multi-engine certified, which means you’re familiar with using two throttles. Just like those throttle levers in the Cessna 310 you fly out of Oxnard, pulling back is reduction of thrust, pushing forward increases thrust.”

This made Helen feel a little better. “Okay,” she said. “Makes sense.” She was still quite nervous for another reason, however. What she was about to do was a complete and total violation of FAA rules. There was no ambiguity about it. She was not type certified in this aircraft and was not supposed to be flying it. But she could not back out now. If she did, Jake would tell her she didn’t have a hair on her ass, an insult she could not abide.

“Is there a CVR in this thing?” she wanted to know.

“No cockpit voice recorder,” he assured her. “It was manufactured with one in place because these aircraft are usually used for executive transport and owned by companies that provide that service. Señor Gomez, the man I bought it from, was a private owner and may or may not have been a Colombian drug lord. He had it removed upon taking delivery, probably because he was afraid of the cops accessing it during a maintenance cycle. I saw no reason to have them put one in after I bought it since I’m a private owner and it’s not required. Not that I’m smuggling drugs or anything, it just seemed unnecessary to put the plane out of commission in Denver for a week and spend fifteen thousand dollars on something that will only be used if I’ve crashed and likely would not provide any useful information. There is an FDR, however. Señor Gomez never had that taken out and neither did I.”

“Interesting backstory on the plane,” Helen said, quite truthfully. “Did you ever meet this Gomez character?”

“I did,” Jake confirmed. “He met me when I took Jill and a mechanic down to Bogota to inspect the plane before purchase. Nice guy, really. He took me out for a few beers and we played some darts. He took fifty thousand dollars off the price when I beat him fair and square, though it was a tough match. Oh ... and Jill boned his pilot later that night at the hotel.”

“Wow,” Helen said, shaking her head. “You certainly lead an interesting life, Jake.”

“I try,” he said with a shrug. “Now, shall we do this thing?”

“Let’s do it,” Helen said.

“Let me just let Center know what we’re going to be doing so they don’t flip out,” Jake said. Though they were on a VFR flight, LA Center, who controlled all aircraft in the air in southern California, western Utah, southern Nevada, and western Arizona was flight following them. He hated to bother them—it was a very busy ATC center—but it was quite necessary.

“Los Angeles Center, Avanti November Charlie,” he said into the headset mic.

“Go ahead, Avanti,” a pleasant female voice replied.

“We have a student pilot aboard and we’re going to be practicing some maneuvers for the next ten or fifteen minutes. Just didn’t want you to be alarmed.”

“Copy that you’ll be doing maneuvers with a student, Avanti,” she answered. “Please advise when the training exercise is complete and you are back on course.”

“Avanti November Charlie will advise when we have completed maneuvers and are back on course to KMYF,” he told her.

He then turned off the autopilot and took manual control of the aircraft. He made an adjustment to the horizontal trim as the wind immediately tried to push them off course. Within seconds they were back holding steady on 172.

“All right,” Jake told her. “Take it.”

Helen put her hands on the yoke, her feet on the rudder pedals. “My aircraft,” she said.

“Student’s aircraft,” Jake said with a grin.

Helen gave him an amused look and then returned to the business at hand. Behind them, Caydee was asleep in her seat (nothing unusual about that) and Celia was more than a little nervous. There were no bumpies over the surface of the ocean right now, but Jake had just handed over manual control to a woman who was completely unfamiliar with the aircraft and, in fact, forbidden by federal law to be flying it.

“Okay,” Jake said. “Let’s do a right turn to two-seven-zero. Bank angle of around forty degrees or so. You shouldn’t have to increase throttle too much at this speed but you will have to adjust it just a bit. The controls are considerably touchier and the aircraft much more responsive than a Cessna 172 or a 310, so do it with that in mind.”

“All right,” she said, giving her lip a quick chew. She then started the turn. The beginning of the bank was rather abrupt but quickly smoothed out. “I see what you mean about touchy.”

“You’re doing good,” Jake said as he watched the bank angle, the compass heading, and the altitude.

Helen increased the throttles just a bit and pulled slightly upward on the yoke. She kept them more or less at fifteen thousand feet, only letting them sink or climb less than fifty feet during the maneuver. She rolled out at 255 degrees and settled them into 270, due west. She adjusted throttles and yoke expertly and then adjusted the horizontal and vertical trim tabs to maintain course and altitude.

“Very nice,” Jake told her. “Let’s do another one, a bigger one. Turn right to zero-nine-zero.”

“Zero-nine-zero,” she confirmed, and then began the maneuver, turning them 180 degrees to the opposite direction. It took about twenty-five seconds and she leveled out perfectly once again.

“Excellent,” Jake told her. “It’s like you already know how to fly or something.”

“This plane is so responsive and smooth,” she said.

“Smoother than a baby’s butt,” Jake said. “And trust me. That’s pretty smooth.”

Helen smiled, keeping her eyes on the instruments and her view outside. Jake had her do several more turns in both directions. She did well on all of them and they ended up on a heading of 180, or due south.

“Let’s do a few descents and ascents now,” Jake suggested. “You up for it?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?” she returned.

“Hey now,” Jake said, feigning seriousness. “No Pope jokes. You have a devoted, churchgoing Catholic sitting behind you.”

“Oh ... right, sorry,” Helen said, actually blushing a bit.

“Yes, I am so offended by that,” Celia said, letting a little giggle escape.

“Bring us down to FL one-zero-zero,” Jake instructed. “The normal vertical speed of descent for this aircraft is three thousand feet per minute. Pulling back the throttles to twenty-five percent will get you there without danger of overspeed. Keep the IAS at two-seven-five and don’t drop below ten thousand. Not even a foot below it.” If they dropped below ten thousand still traveling at 275 knots, they would be violating a basic speed limit of the air. No aircraft below ten thousand feet in altitude was allowed to exceed 250 knots. This was a speed limit that Helen, who primarily flew Cessna 172s and the occasional Cessna 310, never had to worry about.

“Right,” Helen said.

She reduced the throttle and the nose began to dip down. She helped it out by pushing gently forward on the yoke until the vertical speed indicator was pegged at negative three thousand feet per minute. The altimeter scrolled downward. She made gentle movements to the throttles to keep their speed at 275 knots. At 10,500 feet she began to pull gently backward on the yoke and increased the throttles to sixty percent. She pulled them out of the descent slowly, and a bit jerkily, but finally leveled them out at exactly ten thousand feet above the waves below.

“Nice,” Jake told her. “Now, let’s go back up to FL one-five-zero. Vertical speed is again three thousand per minute. Throttles to eighty-five percent, maintain speed of two-seven-five indicated.”

“I’m on it,” Helen said, increasing the throttle. She pulled a bit back on the yoke and they were climbing. She pushed and pulled on the yoke to keep them at exactly positive three thousand feet per minute. Soon, they were back at fifteen thousand feet, still heading due south.

“All right,” Jake said. “You did good, but enough training for now. My aircraft.”

“Instructor’s aircraft,” Helen said with a smile, but it was a smile that conveyed a fair amount of respect.

Jake informed LA Center that they were done with the training exercise and would resume course to Montgomery Field in San Diego. The GPS had already calculated that course. Jake turned the autopilot back on and set it for GPS navigation at fifteen thousand feet and at a speed of 275 knots indicated. Once activated, the plane turned on its own to a heading of 164 and minutely adjusted their altitude and speed so both were exactly what had been set.

“What do you think?” Jake asked his recent student.

“This is a sweet plane,” she said. “I can’t believe how fast it climbs and descends. We’re talking airliner level here.”

“Pretty close,” Jake agreed. “Climbs like an airliner and is almost as fast as a business jet for half the fuel costs. Pretty good range too. We could go sixteen hundred miles with the four of us in here and full tanks. Maintenance is pretty expensive though, and the B checks and above can only be done at Rocky Mountain Airport in Denver. The A checks can be done at SLO, but they’re still more expensive.”

“It’s like owning a Maserati as opposed to Chevy sedan,” Helen said. “Everything about it is going to cost more.”

“That is a correct statement,” Jake said.

“It’s very quiet inside in flight,” Helen said. “I can actually hear what Celia is saying back there, even through the headset on my ears. That surprised me.”

“Rear mounted engines, pusher props, and premium sound insulation all add up to quiet inside. Not so much from the outside, though. The turbine exhaust going through the props makes a very efficient anti-icing setup for the props, but it changes the frequency of the sound, making it higher pitched and warbling to some degree. I get a lot of complaints about it, even though it’s not violating any noise restrictions. The FAA investigated after multiple complaints from both the SLO area and the Whiteman area. They ruled in my favor.”

“It’s nice to have them on your side,” Helen said.

“Yeah,” Jake said sourly. “The word among the common folk and the media is that I paid them off to rule in my favor.”

Helen just shook her head. She, as a professional aviator who was dating an employee of the FAA, knew how ridiculous an idea that was. “Fuckin’ morons,” she said.

“Yep,” Jake concurred.

Jake showed Helen how the autopilot and flight management system worked by letting the plane fly itself, including turns at each navigational checkpoint, into the pattern at Montgomery Field. All he had to adjust was the autothrottle to keep them at the appropriate speed and the altitude and descent rate settings to lower them step by step throughout the process. He deployed the flaps and the landing gear as they lined up for final approach and achieved capture on the ILS for Runway 28R. He set the autothrottle for 92 knots, the final touchdown speed. Even though it was a clear day, with more than twenty miles of visibility and the runway clearly in sight, he let the autopilot take them down to 250 feet above the ground, just past the perimeter fence, before taking over and bringing them the rest of the way down manually. It was clear that this had made Helen nervous the lower they went without Jake assuming control. She knew how to operate the ILS system as she was an IFR rated pilot, but she never really used the skill. The 172s she normally flew did not even have the capabilities for that and, while the Cessna 310 she flew once a year or so had ILS capability, she never used it as she only flew that aircraft in nice weather.

“That was pretty close to touchdown before you took over,” she said once they were safely on the ground and taxiing to the GA terminal.

“I normally take over at around five hundred AGL,” Jake told her, “but I wanted to show you what this baby can do. When visibility is shitty and the ceiling is low it’ll take you all the way down to the decision altitude. It’s let me land more than a few times when I otherwise would have diverted.”

Helen shook her head. “Not for me,” she said. “I’m strictly a fair weather pilot.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Jake said. “You don’t teach IFR at your school so there’s no reason for you to stay proficient in it.”

“You’ve turned out to be a hell of a pilot, Jake,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you,” he said, greatly appreciating her praise. Who did not like being told their former teacher was proud of them?

After tying down the plane and paying the landing fee, Jake rented a BMW 5 series sedan from the rental car counter. They drove to a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant near the downtown area that Jake had discovered his last trip to the city. Only twelve miles from the Mexican border in a city where twenty-four percent of the population were of Mexican heritage and more than half of that number consisted of first and second generation immigrants, the food was quite authentic. There was no sour cream on the tacos or burritos, no nacho cheese on anything, and the tortillas, chips, and salsa were all fresh and handmade. The margaritas were something to be reckoned with but, alas, only Celia could have one (and she did, counting it as her one drink of the day) as both of the other adults had flying duties in less than eight hours.

Jake went with the pollo taco plate, which had two chicken tacos, homemade Spanish rice, and homemade refried beans. Celia had the same. Helen went with a carne asada burrito plate. Caydee chose the three rolled taquitos plate and horchata de arroz, which she had developed a taste for but could only get in circumstances such as these.

The food was delicious and Helen paid the bill (over Jake and Celia’s objections). They then piled back into the BMW and continued on their way to the San Diego Zoo. Jake paid for everyone’s admission here (over Helen’s objection). They went inside and began to explore the various exhibits. All three females and Jake had fun. After working their way back up to the top of the zoo grounds (the foot path started downhill from the visitors center, losing three hundred feet of altitude, and then came back up on the other side) Caydee began clamoring to ride the Africa tram, which was advertised as traveling through the back of the African exhibits, allowing those aboard to see the animals closer up. Jake agreed to take her but the two women bowed out, saying they had seen enough animals for the day.

Jake paid for two sixteen dollar tickets on the tram and he and Caydee boarded the next one to pull into the station. It took off, traveling slowly down a road that pedestrian visitors were not allowed on. Celia and Helen each grabbed ice cream cones from a vendor and then found a bench in the sun to sit down on.

“You seem a bit melancholy,” Celia observed of the pilot.

Helen looked over at her and saw nothing but sympathy in her eyes. “Maybe a bit,” she admitted.

“What’s causing it?” Celia asked. She figured it was being around Caydee, who had been quite charming and cute. Helen was childless and getting close to the age where she would have to face the reality that she was going to remain so. But that was not the problem, not exactly anyway.

“It’s nothing, really,” Helen said. “Nothing that my life decisions haven’t set up for me.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you.”

Helen sighed. “I don’t want you to be upset with me,” she said. “That is absolutely not my intention.”

“Okayyy,” Celia said, doing an unconscious imitation of Caydee.

“It’s just that being around Jake, being around you, being around Teach and even Caydee, seeing how you all live, how successful you all are, is a constant reminder to me that I threw all of that away a few years back.”

“Are you unhappy with the decision you made to break up with Jake?” Celia asked.

“No, not at all,” she said. “At the time, I was close to a mental breakdown. I really did love Jake and I knew that he loved me, but that whole thing with Jenny Johansen ... that just showed me that I could not live that life, could not be in the public spotlight anymore.”

“Then you made the right decision,” Celia said gently. “The right one at that time. You got out of the spotlight and went back to being anonymous.”

“I did do that,” she said. “And I’ve been reasonably content since then. Oh, I’ll never find another lover like Jake. I’m sure you know what I mean by that.”

Celia smiled. “Yes, I know what you mean. Jake is quite good at the physical aspect of being a husband. Most of the other aspects as well. He’s a good father, a good provider, obviously, and he’s a gentle soul but one who will do anything to protect and defend his loved ones.”

“And that’s what I missed out on by making that decision,” Helen said. “As I said, it was the right decision for me to make at that time of my life. A part of me, however, wonders how things would have turned out if I had hung in there, if I had agreed to move in with him instead of leaving him. Where would we be now? Would we be married? I think that very likely. Would we still be married today? It’s hard to answer that one because we never tried living together, but I think maybe we would be. Jake is not a quitter and he’s a reasonable man. Would that be my child now riding on the Africa tram with him? Would I be the co-owner of that beautiful plane we flew over here in? Would I be living on a house on a cliff in San Luis Obispo County, operating my own flight school out of SLO Regional?”

“It’s hard to accurately measure what might have been,” Celia said. “Jake’s life certainly would have been different if that had happened. He likely would not have isolated himself for six months in New Zealand after you broke up with him and the entire Intemperance band broke up with each other. That period of misery and doubt in his life helped shape Jake into the Jake we now know. I imagine that KVA Records still would have happened, but Jake and Laura never would have gotten together as a couple and eventually married. And I’m reasonably sure that you are not bisexual, so you never would have suggested that you, me, and Jake have a little experimental threesome one night.”

“No,” Helen said with a laugh. “You are a very beautiful woman, and I have no problem with what the three of you have with each other, but I am truly not into that sort of thing. It never would have happened.”

“Probably on multiple levels,” Celia said. “I likely would not have been receptive to such an offer even if you had made it. It was Laura, after dallying with some female groupies while out on a South American tour with Bobby Z, that first realized she was bisexual. It was her telling me the stories of those dalliances that first got me thinking about other women as sexual partners, something I had never really thought about before but, once it was in my mind, I began to obsess about. Eventually, I gave it a try with a female pilot out on tour and found out I really liked it and wanted to do it more. If Laura had not had an intimate relationship with Jake at the time of that tour, it is likely she would not have sought out female companionship. She probably would have hooked up with some guy named Squiggy—or something like that anyway—and God only knows where that would have gone. She probably wouldn’t have toured with me the next time I went out. She might not have even played sax on any more of my CDs. You see where I’m going with this?”

“Not really,” Helen admitted.

“It’s life and it’s the past,” Celia said. “We all have to live with the choices we made in the past. You can speculate—as I just did—about what might have been, but you can’t change it. You made your decision and life carried all of us forward into the arrangements that followed because of that decision. I, for one, am happy you made that decision the way you did. It has allowed me to be the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

Helen gave a crooked smile. “Glad I could help,” she said.

The tram returned and Caydee had a multitude of stories to tell about the animals she had seen during it. “We were just a couple of feet away from a giraffe!” she exclaimed. “And we saw a whole shitload of warthogs and meercats laying around. They look just like they do in Lion King!”

As she continued to tell her tales, Jake bought her an ice cream cone and they began to make their way back to the rental car. Thirty-five minutes later, Jake was performing the external preflight on the Avanti. He filed his flight plan and they all climbed inside. He went through the engine start checklist and fired both engines up. After programming his flight computer (Helen was fascinated by the flight computer, as well as by the computer screen checklists), he contacted the ground controller frequency and was given permission to taxi.

“You feel like taking us up?” Jake asked Helen as they bumped along the taxiways.

“Uh ... well ... I guess,” she said, very doubtfully. “If you think I can do it without stalling us out and smashing into some neighborhood.”

“It’ll be easy,” Jake said. “All you have to do is the basic flying: speed, altitude, rate of climb, course. I’ll handle the radios, configure the plane for takeoff, monitor speed and climb rate, handle the gear and the flaps. You just fly and follow the little yellow line on the GPS display. It’s the standard egress route for aircraft departing to the north. Unless ATC tells us differently, you just follow it. Our target altitude is FL-160, just two thousand below the Class A airspace where we would be required to go IFR. That’s why we’re staying down low.”

“You consider sixteen thousand feet to be down low, huh?” Helen asked, amused.

“For this plane, it is,” he said. “When I’m just hopping back and forth from SLO to Whiteman, I keep at twelve or thirteen thousand if it’s VFR because it’s only a twenty-five minute flight from wheels up to touchdown. If I’m flying to Heritage or Pocatello or Denver, however, I take it up to thirty-one or thirty-two thousand, depending on which direction I’m flying in. You get a much faster ground speed that way, it saves fuel since the engines don’t need to work so hard in cruise flight, and it gives you a lot of altitude to maneuver with if something goes wrong. The plane can actually go as high as forty-one thousand but I don’t generally go there. It gets a little sluggish up above FL-380 because the air is so thin, and I don’t like sluggish.”

“That makes sense,” Helen said. She rarely flew higher than eight thousand feet and usually stuck to around five thousand if high terrain was not an issue.

Jake closed out his taxi checklist and brought up the takeoff checklist. He looked over at Helen. “Care to take us to the runway?”

“I’m not familiar with this airport,” she said.

“Neither am I,” Jake said, “but I have the map right here on the screen.” He pointed. “Head for that taxiway there and turn right.”

She released the brakes and then throttled up a bit. The plane began to slowly move. She steered the same way she did on her planes, with the rudder pedals. She turned right on the taxiway, left onto another, and was soon paralleling the main runway. A Cessna Citation was currently barreling down it, engines screaming as it made its takeoff run. Both pilots ignored it. It would be long gone before they made it to the runway.

Helen got them easily to the hold line and brought the aircraft to a halt. Celia, behind Jake, was gripping the seat back of his chair hard enough to turn her knuckles white. Again, she did not like this one little bit. Jake went down the checklist and configured them for takeoff. Flaps were extended to takeoff position. Trim was set for takeoff. Speed bugs were in the proper places.

“Okay,” Jake said. “V1 at this runway length and elevation with the weight we have aboard is eighty-eight knots. VR is ninety-three. Obviously, if something happens that is not routine, I will immediately take over the controls.”

“Obviously,” Helen said.

“Pull back gently on the yoke when I say we’re at VR. If your nose comes up too much on takeoff, you do not get a tail strike on this aircraft. You get a prop strike. Obviously, losing both props when you just rotated and we have already passed well beyond V1 is a big problem. Let’s not go there.”

“Right,” Helen said. “That would be bad.”

“That would be NTSB guys coming to investigate our little mishap and getting their information from us by autopsy bad,” Jake said. “Once you have positive rate of climb and I put the gear up, you want to be climbing at thirty-five hundred feet per minute. Your speed will continue to increase into the 170 knot range. That’s when I’ll retract the flaps and you’ll adjust us to a climb of three thousand per minute and a speed of 250 knots. At the same time, just follow the yellow brick line on the GPS. That’s all there is to it.”

“Yes, Sensei,” she told him, bringing a smile to his face. That was what he used to call her when she was teaching him.

They were given clearance for takeoff so Helen throttled up a bit, getting them moving. She turned onto Runway 28R, the same one they had landed on as it faced into the prevailing ten knot wind. She lined up on the center line without difficulty and then hesitated.